Tag: <span>jurisprudence</span>

Fuller's conception of "Customary Law"

"I shall argue that the phenomenon called "customary law" can best be described as a language of interaction. To interact meaningfully, men require a social setteing in which the moves of the participating players will fall generall within some predictable pattern. To engage in effective social behavior, men need the support of intermeshing anticipations that will let them know what their opposite numbers will do, or that will at least enable them to gauge the general scope of the repertory from which responses to their actions will be drawn." (p.173)

Lon L. Fuller, Human Interaction and the Law, In The Rule of Law, edited by Rbert Paul Wolff, Newyork: Simon and Schuster, 1971, pp. 171-217.

It is not as Distinct as It Seems

It is not as Distinct as It Seems:
A Note on the Debates on the Separation of Law and Morals in the Contemporary World
 
 
Contents

I. Introduction
II. Topic One: Is there any Necessary Connection between Law and Morality?
III. Topic Two: Is It Necessary to Enforce the Morality with Law?
IV. It is Not as Distinct as It Seems
V. Revelations for Chinese Jurisprudence
VI. Conclusion

I. Introduction

After the Second World War, the German courts raised many problems that nearly destroyed the domination of so called “positive law” philosophy since Bentham, Austin and Kelson.[1] Executioners and talebearers defended themselves with this reason: they were enforcing the existed Nazi written law, which was the “positive law of Germany”, so what they did were lawful and could not be sentenced. Although this argument did not find it’s legitimacy in the very judgments to Nazis, it has brought a series of debates around the relationship between law and morals throughout the second half of twentieth century, and the endless debates may continue to the twenty fifth century, if the Marx’s communistic world still hangs on the sky at that time.[2]
 
The debates on the separation of law and morality throughout the twentieth century are so complicated that one may not accurately summarize all the discussions in a short essay. Nevertheless, this note will briefly introduce some core debates among scholars. Furthermore, I hope to demonstrate hereby that the differences among those prominent scholars’ arguments on this issue are not as tremendous as it seems, though they did distinguish from each other clearly in many aspects. Finally, from these debates, I am trying to find some revelations that may be applied into the legal research in the context of Chinese jurisprudence.

Philosophy of Law

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Philosophy of Law

Philosophers of law are concerned with providing a general philosophical analysis of law and legal institutions. Issues in legal philosophy range from abstract conceptual questions about the nature of law and legal systems to normative questions about the relation between law and morality and the justification for various legal institutions. Topics in legal philosophy tend to be more abstract than related topics in political philosophy and applied ethics. For example, whereas the question of how properly to interpret the U.S. Constitution belongs to democratic theory and hence falls under the heading of political philosophy, the analysis of legal interpretation falls under the heading of legal philosophy. Likewise, whereas the question of whether capital punishment is morally permissible falls under the heading of applied ethics, the question of whether the institution of punishment can be justified falls under the heading of legal philosophy. Topics in legal philosophy fall roughly into three categories: analytic jurisprudence, normative jurisprudence, and critical theories of law.

Table of Contents (Clicking on the links below will take you to those parts of this article)